Game:

Demon's Souls (2009)

Duration: 7:46

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1

Welcome to Demon's Souls, where I just keep on mowin em down.

No skills were used in the making of this series. =)

For a long while I thought Penetrator was going to break this run. He's a fairly difficult boss who's un-stealthable and very aggressive. There's almost no way to beat him without learning his roll timings, or getting incredibly lucky. Or maybe a combination of both. There was some real fear that I might have to actually "git gud".

Then I remembered the only boss-summon NPC in the game.

1:04 I return to the Tower Knight archstone, but not for 1-3 yet. Instead we're going to backtrack into 1-2.

3:31 I begin 1-3 for real. This run is brutal, pretty much a combination of what makes every other run in the game bad. Even Second Chance buys you only minimal leeway here, because there's almost no point along the run to stop and renew it. The one spot is after the Fat Official. If you want to be able to take advantage of that, you'll need to leave the Ring of Devout Prayer on instead of the Eternal Warrior's Ring. The fact that I make this run on my first try without taking a single hit from anything seems pretty remarkable to me. I would expect maybe a 1/4 success rate, maybe 1/10 if you're still perfecting the route. I'll try to highlight all of the points where you're likely to take a hit.

3:58 Sometimes this dog will be random and hit you from the side even if you're holding your shield up. Also you have to be super careful of your stamina management, especially if you're still using a mere Buckler+6 like I am. Notice here that I'm just a hair away from being empty on stamina and taking a guard break, which will mean an instant death. Taking the hit here is good for me for video purposes because it reduces my Makoto time, but normally I would suggest trying to take no hits and just let Makoto drain you down at the fog gate.

4:00 Doesn't happen often, but sometimes the second dog here will time it perfectly and get you from behind while you're out of stamina from blocking his buddy.

4:15 This Fat Official can be really random and hit you with a fireball, either while you're running past him, or from behind when you're at the top of the stairs.

4:23 Pause here and renew Second Chance if you need to and still have it available.

4:35 Both of these guys are the same spearman who has that crazy wide sweeping attack that can clip your ankles even if you think you've avoided it. Sticking to the far right here is usually decently successful for me (probably 3/4 times or better), but getting past is still mostly pure luck. If you wanted better certainty you could toss a Soul Remains over to the left wall before charging through here.

4:41 These guys almost never hit me, but they will do their best to block the path. Rolling on the far right here is a very consistent way to prevent that.

4:50 This is another spot where a roll on the far right gets you through, but this is also another enemy who will sometimes make a perfectly timed attack and kill you. Using a Soul Remains to distract here is much harder because of the number of enemies now swarming the area.

4:52 Finally, this Red-Eye Knight probably has about a 50/50 chance of spearing you against the wall perfectly. As far as I can tell there is no better strategy to get past him, and the best I usually hope for is to reach this point with Second Chance still intact, and take the hit here. Even with that, there is an even worse worst-case scenario where the middle Red-Eye Knight charges right after his buddy, and since the first hit stuns you, you'll take two instant-kills back-to-back, ending the run.

As I said, with all the stuff that can go wrong here, I'm really amazed that I got all the way to the boss door first try with Second Chance still active. Maybe I'm being overly conservative in estimating the odds here and I just emphasize the bad experiences in my mind, but still, don't feel bad if you find yourself dying repeatedly along this path. It's just an exercise in patience and determination.

5:09 Look who it is!

5:58 The Penetrator fight begins. I completely mess this up and enter the fight without healing my MP. But thanks to good RNG, Biorr almost kills Penetrator on his own. This can go the other way, though, and Penetrator can kill Biorr pretty rapidly on a bad run, so you want to be cautious. If it looks like the fight is about to go bad and Biorr is going to die, get Penetrator to kill you instead. It's far preferable to die yourself than to lose Biorr. If he dies here, he won't come back, and this fight gets about a thousand times harder. You'll notice Biorr is hitting him way harder than I am.

Afterward, I re-equip Second Chance but forget my suicides to restore PBWT. They'll have to be at the beginning of the next segment.

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